Six options built to function differently at the table, not just look different.
Born in soul-static-saturated zones — dead reactors, mass-grave sites, old battlefields — with a fragment of someone else's soul already fused into theirs at birth. Not possession, not a second personality. Just occasional bleed: a skill they never learned, a stranger's accent for one sentence, a flinch at a memory that isn't theirs.
Size / Speed
Medium / 25 ft
Boosts
Wis, Cha free · Int flaw
Traits: Residual, Humanoid
Bleed-Through
Once per day, treat one untrained skill as trained for a single check — the stranger's hands remembering something you never learned.
Borrowed Instinct
Once per day, reroll a failed Perception or Recall Knowledge check, flavored as the fragment's memory surfacing uninvited.
Already a Foothold
Drawback: possession and soul-based effects find you slightly easier to affect — there's already a door left ajar.
Uriel's Turning
Cinderborn
Descended from people caught in the initial radius of the Turning — close enough to survive, not far enough to walk away clean. A permanent, low-level physical mark of that specific event: faint warmth, hairline cracks that glow under stress. This is Uriel's corruption bleeding into a bloodline, not fallout mutation #4.
Size / Speed
Medium / 25 ft
Boosts
Str/Con free, free · Cha flaw
Traits: Cinderborn, Humanoid
Banked Warmth
Minor fire resistance; you're never quite cold.
Hairline Cracks
When frightened or below half HP, faint cracks along your skin visibly glow — a tell you can't hide, but can weaponize as intimidation.
A Fingerprint, Not a Coincidence
Choir of Ash rituals and NPCs recognize what you are on sight; you gain an edge dealing with them — and they occasionally try to call you home.
Descended from the survivors of a Gaunt-Choir-adjacent mass-death site — quarantine camps, plague pits — whose children were born already half-attuned to the dead singing underneath everything.
Size / Speed
Medium / 25 ft
Boosts
Wis, Cha free · Str flaw
Traits: Hymnkin, Humanoid
The Hymn Underneath
Faint, involuntary awareness of large death events or plague-adjacent danger nearby, whether you want it or not.
Plague Blood
Resistance to disease.
A Voice Recognized
The Gaunt Choir (Flesh-mancer dossier) knows your bloodline by feel; a minor drawback of susceptibility to despair effects comes with it.
Paradise Servers
Wire-wards
Raised inside a dead AI cluster or a Paradise-adjacent server core — not as a construct, but as a human who grew up biologically alongside a machine intelligence instead of a person. Congenital, not cybernetic: a small interface node they were born with, not installed.
Size / Speed
Medium / 25 ft
Boosts
Int free ×2 · Cha flaw
Traits: Wire-ward, Humanoid
Congenital Node
Sense nearby active machine intelligence or ghost-machines at short range; once per day, exchange a small amount of data with one directly.
Raised Without a Script
Resistance to Deception and manipulation effects that rely on normal social assumptions you were simply never taught.
A Parent, Somewhere
A faint, permanent link to the specific server-core that raised you — a standing GM hook, not a mechanical bonus.
Soul-Economy · Ghost-Machines
Emberforged
A spirit bound into an industrial furnace, once. Then the binding failed, or was never quite finished, and something with enough coherence to want things walked out of the wreck instead of staying a tool. A body of contained fire and embers, loosely held in a scavenged husk.
Size / Speed
Medium / 25 ft
Boosts
Str/Dex free, free · Wis flaw
Traits: Emberforged, Kindled, Fire
A Body of Fire
Immune to fire damage; no need to breathe. Vulnerable to cold, and water-based effects threaten you the way drowning threatens flesh.
Fed, Not Fed
Doesn't eat or sleep — needs periodic fuel or fresh Ghost-Static to avoid guttering out over long stretches without it.
Heat Surge
Briefly burn brighter and hotter for extra fire damage on your next strike, at the cost of guttering closer to needing fuel sooner.
An Escaped Tool
The Foreman (Scrapwright dossier) has complicated feelings about you either way — reverence, resentment, or both are all valid.
Pre-Collapse Tech
Old-World Construct
A synthetic person built before the Turning, still running on a body that was cutting-edge two hundred years ago and has been quietly maintaining itself ever since.
Size / Speed
Medium / 25 ft
Boosts
Dex, Int free · Cha flaw
Traits: Old-World Construct, Humanoid, Construct
Synthetic Body
Resistance to disease and poison; rests via low-power cycle rather than ordinary sleep.
Suppression Protocol
Resistance to fear and emotion effects — and a harder time reading as sincere to ordinary humans at a glance.
Full Diagnostic
Once per day, know your own current conditions and afflictions with total clarity.
Note: the draft "Chromeborn" concept — nanite integration blurring built vs. born — now lives here as the Grafted-Chrome Heritage rather than as its own ancestry. See the Heritage supplement.